It’s always a nervy moment heading into a bookshop and wondering if your beloved tome will be there. But yesterday, feeling brave, I decided to duck into Waterstones Trafalgar Square, having just made a (reasonably successful) visit to the National Gallery with my son. First to New Fiction — nada. Then to New Crime — another blank. ‘Let’s just go,’ I said, but my son persisted, heading to the counter where a delightful lady called Charlie looked up the book on her computer. ‘It should be here somewhere…’ she said, and led us the very places we had just checked. ‘Could have sold out?’ I ventured hopefully, but no, missing was the conclusion. ‘Perhaps it’s downstairs,’ Charlie suggested. ‘Mis-shelved…’ A vision of what little stock there was being mistakenly put in the cooking sections of the nation’s bookshops swept over me. My son insisted we check downstairs, and we were just on our way there when… ‘Wait!’ Charlie yelled. Three Saffron Thieves had been covered up by another book (some cosy crime novel), thereby obscuring their actually quite prominent place on the New Crime shelves. ‘And they’re outward facing too,’ Charlie said. ‘Why don’t you sign them and we can sticker them accordingly?’ And so, what a moment ago had felt like a psychologically damaging bookshop visit had become something encouraging. And all because of a kind bookseller’s actions leading to a ‘late reveal’ — a good technique for thriller writing generally… Picture of books, pre-stickering below…
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